Can we stop pretending that Path of Exile is free to play?

Well it's technically true that this game is NOT free to play....you need a PC, working electricity with internet connection.

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Destructodave wrote:

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ajo wrote:

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Boem wrote:

P2W is the ability to translate real money in game assets to fascilitate a win condition.

Nope, it's when you can pay real money for advantages. The more advantages, time saves & conveniences you can buy, the more pay-to-win the game becomes.

Exactly. THats what I mean by these people having such a narrow viewpoint on p2w.

I'm still waiting on examples of p2w games from these people if they dont consider stash pages to fall into that category, give me some game examples to debate with.

Even in the mobile market, advantages and convenience are the vast majority, and i mean vast, of all p2w you run into. We can also throw out the token wikipedia definition, which gets posted often and glossed over: "In general a game is considered pay-to-win when a player can gain any gameplay advantage over his non-paying peers." ANY advantage. Thats tabs.

Holy jumpin' Jesus this thread get's me worked up.

So, as for examples, I remember two currently dead games, which were textbook cases of P2W. Gunz Online and War Rock. Both games were online shooters, where you played against other players. A good chunk of weapons and armor were locked behind a paywall or demanded a ridiculous amount of gameplay hours (which was not sustainable, because the better gear was temporary). You pay money, you either do more damage or take less. Which was the core premise of both these games. You do more damage and kill the opponent, the game itself throws a big "You win!" text in front of you. This was made considerably easier, because you paid money. That's how I see what the "advantage over non-paying peers" mean.

I'm still coming from a position where I see "P2W" as a concretely defined argument, which is applicable to PvP instances ONLY.

Now, for PoE. There are couple instances in PoE which can be considered PvP (racing, being first to get some chalenges and actual PvP arena). Yes, it seems that these aspects of the game aren't very popular and most of the playerbase don't care about them, which is seen in this thread, as all of these aspects have been barely talked about.

If what Boem and few others are saying is true, and extra tabs actually doesn't give you advantage in this regard, then plain and simply, PoE can't be called P2W.

"But I need stash tabs to do all the things that I want. And if I define P2W as I want, then PoE is P2W and you are white knights and beebeebee." No! Get your words together! If the extra amount of work which is needed to be competitive at the same level as a paying user is reasonable, then this can not be called P2W. P2W is not a broad term, in my eyes (looking back, when the term and games using it emerged) it's very narrow and precise.

I for one consider European GGGs monetization practise close to what it should and could be ethically. I bought my first stash tabs after, I don't know, 120 or so hours of gameplay. I've played about 350h now and have overall spent ~30 euros on this game. Yes, it's more convenient to have a currency tab and so on. Does it give me any fundamental advantages over other players? Hell if I know, BECAUSE I DON'T PLAY WITH THEM. Do all the asians that are playing PoE in Tencentasia have an advantage over me because auto-loot pets? WHO CARES? WE'RE NOT PLAYING AGAINST EACH OTHER!

If you really, really want to throw stones in GGGs garden about monetization (and there actually is a valid discussion about that), then yes, specialized stash tabs actually makes me feel better, when I gather currency, divination cards etc. Do I know how to play the game efficiently after 350h of gameplay? No, I have ~700 chromatics lying in my stash, no idea what will I do with them. I've seen in practice, that the regular extra tabs I get just increases clutter and that's it.

As for trading (because people tend to define their abstract position in market as something "winnable"), up to this day I'm using 3rd party tools to trade (acquisition). I still don't even know how to use the premium tabs for this purpose. The fact that 3rd party tools are openly discussed here and are not limited by GGG in any way is to be considered, that they support the use of it. Which again, gives you an reasonable option to "compete" with paying players.

If you really want to call this in bad names, call it "predatory monetization" (here's a broad term ;) ).

I'm not gonna spellcheck this post because I have to go to work and I didn't choose the best time for writing a text wall. Stupid GGG forum! It's all their fault, with their forum and posts and users and paid stash tabs!

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ajo wrote:

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You make redundant and stupid arguments about P2W and then question why i'm so "hung up" on asking you to define your "win conditions".

Man you are daft.

If you want to argue a game is P2W then by definition the purchases need to give you a clear advantage in reaching the "win condition" or the term doesn't qaulify. Apparently this piece of redundant trivia needs to be spelled out for people like you.

F2P is clearly defined as a concept and so is P2W, you can blame the development of language for that.

Nothing behind a paywal = F2P
Purchases give a gameplay advantage over non paying customers = P2W

More stash tabs dont give you a gameplay advantage, but a hoarding advantage therefore they aren't P2W. They don't unlock additional gameplay features which non paying customers are restricted from.
Gameplay advantage in the context of "P2W" is an advantage towards "winning" which should be obvious considering the term itself so defining winning should be a primary ambition if you want to argue something is P2W.

Peace,

-Boem-

So, the thread progress a lot since i visited a last time.

I give you my definition of P2E: Ability to spend real life money to improve his or her in-game performance. This in very simple terms means to me that you can pay money to make your character stronger, more durable, kill faster.

This is also what Google offers as one of the first hits when inquiring about P2W:

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Pay to win - a situation where the player can buy in-game content or in-game changes, with real money, that give the player a gameplay advantage or advance the player gameplaywise.

Term P2W has roots in mobile games where you could literally buy weapons, other items or speed up time. One very important aspect of P2W for me is that a game with P2W features was deliberately designed to incentivize players to spend money. This is achieved by various means, eg. time-gatting, limiting how many times you can attempt to to beat a level or by have excessive waiting time requirements for each actions taken by players.

In my view, a game can be called pay to win only when it meets both above conditions. Having just one or there does not qualify the game to be called pay to win in my opinion.

Bringing this back to PoE, many people in this thread stated that it is possible to beat this game with just 4 normal stashes. There is also no option to purchase with real life money items provided by GGG via their official shop that make your character better at performing actions in-game. Yes, the game allows you to spend money on certain features that make the game more convenient, ie. stash tabs, but if you set 2 characters next to each other where one bought stash tabs and the other did not, they will kill at same speed given their gear is equal and builds are comparable.

So, this is my reasoning why I feel that PoE is still free to play game.

Pay to be comfortably trading/storing, sure. lets say 0.1/10 p2w.

To answer the question of OP, yea it is free to play. You make an account, install the game, login and play.

Edit: NASA calculated the 0.1.

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Molochmane wrote:

Well it's technically true that this game is NOT free to play....you need a PC, working electricity with internet connection.

Well that is stating the obvious. But we all know that the minimum computer requirements as stated by GGG are woefully not going to cut it playing in the PoE realm so we must pay to get decent quality of play (SSD is mandatory now). So if we want to view PoE in terms of what performance level of computer and Internet connection is required just to play, then PoE is definitely not free to play. But that's true of any software. We just don't need to shell out at the beginning to play PoE. That comes a little later if/when you decide you like this game and want to play successfully into the endgame.

Path of Exile is close to be free to play. You can try the whole content for free (My friend played PoE for 3 year without any investment)
You can trade your currency and map to high walue currency sell valuable items. There is many way to compose with 4 stashes.

BUT there is a high life improvement by buying some stashes.
I can get my friends to try out PoE for free, till map without them have any issues with 4 stashes.
If they enjoy the game and want to support the game and have more quality of life for the end game, they can get a supporter pack for 30$/25€ and have 250 points (& some GFX)

With 250 you can have, with the sales (1/2 times each ligue), 1 currency tab 1 map tab, as least 2 premium tab or 1 premium and 4 upgrades to premium.
This is enought to play the game with huge comfort.

In conclusion :
You can play the game for free forever (many players do)
You have to pay 30$ for a full enjoyment of the game i suppose but you can do it AFTER doing the whole content.

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Boem wrote:

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ajo wrote:

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You make redundant and stupid arguments about P2W and then question why i'm so "hung up" on asking you to define your "win conditions".

Man you are daft.

If you want to argue a game is P2W then by definition the purchases need to give you a clear advantage in reaching the "win condition" or the term doesn't qaulify. Apparently this piece of redundant trivia needs to be spelled out for people like you.

F2P is clearly defined as a concept and so is P2W, you can blame the development of language for that.

Nothing behind a paywal = F2P
Purchases give a gameplay advantage over non paying customers = P2W

More stash tabs dont give you a gameplay advantage, but a hoarding advantage therefore they aren't P2W. They don't unlock additional gameplay features which non paying customers are restricted from.
Gameplay advantage in the context of "P2W" is an advantage towards "winning" which should be obvious considering the term itself so defining winning should be a primary ambition if you want to argue something is P2W.

Peace,

-Boem-

You've repeated yourself a dozen times here and guess what? It still hinges on the idea that you can "win" PoE. You can't. Which I think is part of the reason the conversation is being argued in black and white when there is ONLY grey areas.

Getting level 100 and beating Sirus isn't winning. 40/40 challenges isn't winning. The ENTIRE premise of this game is that you NEVER win. Why do you think people have 20k hours in the game? If anything, the purpose of this game is to make more and more and more characters, constantly trying new things, re-leveling, killing bosses safer, faster, etc...

So all the "winning" aspects are all on a sliding scale. The point is that being able to hold more currency, spend less time using forums as a trade mechanic, and being able to "hoard" extra armor for new characters are all going to improve your gameplay experience (as in: you'll spend more time actually playing the game, and less playing inventory tetris or trying to sell things on forums).

So many of the Boem-esque rants I see on here and based on the fact that, "I've got 7 bajillion hours in the game and can do it fine on 4 tabs."

That's 100% not the point. New players won't have the knowledge or experience. The point is that I've heard TONS of new players (both online and in my real life) say that they feel all the stash tabs (non-cosmetic MTX) are too much of a quality-of-life for the game to be ignored. Most of these people have quit playing the game 5 hours in, because they had NO idea what to pick up, and what not to pick up, and don't have nearly enough space to figure it out.

For many people, the fun of these games is gathering and comparing items, learning what's good and what's not. That's nearly impossible to do from zero experience with the baseline given to you.

To be real, new player retention would be much higher with a couple of the specialty stashes or a single premium stash available through gameplay (maybe unlock currency tab after act 5, map after act 10).

The problem is that almost from the very start, aside from hundreds of skill gems, a multitude of mechanics, and a passive tree that is unnecessarily daunting...there's this wall people realize is quickly approaching as they start collecting all the various things there are to collect.

It's actually idiotic to say, "Well just don't pick everything up!" Of COURSE. But new players have to LEARN what's worth picking up by picking up things that AREN'T worth keeping. HUNDREDS (thousands?) of uniques and div cards. 200+ skill gems. Fragments. More fragments. Even more fragments.

Everything in this game takes up slots.

If you want an alternative argument, here you go.

Free to play players can experience all the game has to offer, right?

Right...given an infinite amount of time.

Sure, they can hit level 100 and beat Sirus with enough time. However, they will never do significant amounts of fossil crafting, meta-crafting, or really any level of crafting at all (except maybe alt-regal or chaos spamming). There are high tier aspects of this game that REQUIRE more space.

Even then, you could argue that with enough time, people can still see all this. Sure. But without the room to collect all these items at once, it would take exponentially longer.

It still feels disingenuous for them to say, "free game with NO pay to win elements".

That's like someone saying, "Sure, you can come live with me for free." and then putting you in a small dog kennel. Then say, "For $5 you can sit on the couch, for $10 you can watch TV, and for $20 I'll quit feeding you dog food."

Sure, you can technically live there for free, but you'd never want to.

And that's the point.

You CAN play for free. You CAN do everything for free.

However, for just about all new players it would be SO excruciatingly boring and time consuming, most either pay or give up.

If those are the two options, I think it's a bad look. If they got MORE people playing, I think more people would feel okay buying actual cosmetic MTX. I don't believe GGG would go broke. I think they'd have a more expanded player base that didn't feel quite as forced to pay money.

And I know people that would pay for cosmetics, but refuse to pay for stash tabs that feel like they should be part of the base game. So that's lost money for GGG. Who knows how many more people out there are like that.

I think there's a reason PoE is kind of stuck around 100k concurrents at the beginning of leagues, is that so many potential new players are being pushed away as more and more garbage exists to fill the limited space given.

I don't expect anything to change.

I don't expect everyone to agree with me.

I just hope people see this as an exercise in protecting ourselves as people who enjoy video games. A reason to talk about how many fingers we'll allow in our wallets before we say enough.

Most of all, a way to keep this from BECOMING an epidemic. Companies get away with a lot of vague wordings and hype lingo to keep people from seeing an encroaching unfairness within a system. What's next? Pay to have a crafting bench? Pay to unlock master missions? It's a slippery slope, and we're the only ones with money on the line.

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Hydraks wrote:

In conclusion :
You can play the game for free forever (many players do)

This is more or less the freakin' definition of "F2P", so why you start your post with "close to F2P", is beyond me. People calling Path of Exile "not F2P", are just factually wrong. There's no argument. It's not debatable, yet this thread has almost 30 pages. It just goes to show that people have no clue what "free to play" means, and have this over-glorified, "ethical", subjective view of what F2P "should be". It's irrelevant.

"Free to play" does not mean "no pay to win elements".

Whether or not Path of Exile is P2W is a completely different debate. And while P2W games more often than not are based on the premise of "buying power over and over again", Path of Exile is not. You don't get "power" from stash tabs, and you absolutely do not get "more power" the more stash tabs you buy. You can't buy yourself to the top of the ladder, and you can't use money to get "ahead" league after league. Stash tabs are a cheap, one-time purchase that will increase your enjoyment of the game.

Yet people are hellbent on putting Path of Exile in the same box Clash of Clans, Archeage and Maple Story, as GGG shouldn't be allowed to market PoE as "free to play". I can agree that marketing themselves as "free" is a stretch, as there should be a clear distinction between "free" and "free to play".

But "free to play"? Path of Exile is - and will probably always be "free to play".

Lmao Archeage omg you can tell some p2win players in here never played that